Devlin's Curse (21 page)

Ligea, her face obscured by a long veil, presided over the brief ceremony. They lay Devlin’s casket in the stone crypt and sealed it with a heavy cross of silver.

After they emerged from the cemetery Esmeralda paused. She turned to Jamie and Dahlia. Even through her grief she did not fail to notice the new energy that pulsed between them.

“Jamie, I will need you to handle my business affairs for the next few days. Dahlia, you are welcome as well.”

Jamie nodded. He did not quite meet her gaze. “Yes Miss Esmeralda. Did you want me to open up the Salon as usual?”

“For the time being, yes. I will send word to you tomorrow”

They parted ways Jamie, with Dahlia on his arm, disappeared into the night towards B Street.

“Are ya gonna tell her?” Dahlia asked. 

Jamie nodded. “When the time is right. I ain’t leavin’ her high and dry. Miss Esmeralda’s been good to me.”

Dahlia looked up at him her eyes shining. “Ain’t I been good to ya?”

Jamie pulled her close and kissed her longingly.

“Yes you have and I’d be lying if I was to say that I weren’t plum over the moon for you, I knowed it the first time I laid eyes on ya.”

Dahlia kissed him back. Despite the grim circumstance of their meeting, Jamie was filled with happiness. In the hours while they had hid terrified in the bushes waiting for the outcome between Devlin, Big Jim and the demon, they had become lovers. Dahlia had been his first and he adored her. He had also become her willing donor. They’d whispered their confessions of love in the dark and he promised to follow her to New Orleans and run her riverboat. He did not care that she had been a whore and a thief. Like him she had never had anyone to call her own. She had a heart of gold and they were two of a kind – two of the Forgotten who had found each other.

When they had parted ways Esmeralda faced Walking Ghost. “Thank you for all you have done. Maybe now you can find peace. Maybe we all can all find peace, most of all Devlin.”

Walking Ghost looked out over dark rolling hills of the cemetery. “Where will you go?”

Esmeralda smiled in the dark. As usual Walking Ghost like Annie could see right through her. “Somewhere, anywhere and there is no need to try to find me.”

Walking Ghost nodded. “May your journey be safe, woman of Devlin’s heart.”

“And yours too, my friend” she replied.

Esmeralda left the cemetery. She had not slept in twenty four hours. What had happened in Virginia City marked for her the second brush with Devlin and another monstrous evil. Each time he had cheated death by less and less. If not for her, Devlin would not have been endangered. If not for him, she would be now what she loathed the most. A cursed vampire, an undead pariah doomed to walk the earth for eternity. 

She hurried up the street to the Emerald Salon. The house was silent, not a soul stirred. Once inside she emptied her vanity drawers and the contents of her armoire into a large carpetbag and then dressed in a dark velvet travelling dress. She was leaving tonight. She would not wait for their next encounter, if ever there should be one, because three was a mystical number and she was superstitious. She did not believe that the third time would be a charm.

After all her efforts to save him had failed and Devlin had been lowered into his crypt, it was time for her to leave. She fled Virginia City with a vengeance. She boarded the train in Carson City, headed out of Nevada, and never looked back. 

When she arrived in San Francisco she stayed briefly, just long enough to quench the powerful gut wrenching thirst that had possessed her. She did not know where to turn or how to choose her first victim her only clue was on a crumpled piece of paper, the address of a private parlor in Chinatown that Grandmother Woo had pressed into her hand at Devlin’s bedside.

She walked down steep and crooked streets until finally coming to a narrow scarlet door. Chinese characters were written above it in red paint. She knocked at the door. A young Chinese boy led her into the dark interior. In a silk draped parlor was the Madame. A celestial beauty with elaborately curled and piled hair dressed in western clothes. Esmeralda handed her the note and after a brief glance the Madame clapped her hands. A door opened into the parlor and a handsome Chinese man with a long black braid entered, he bowed slightly to Esmeralda. Her heart beat swiftly and she licked her dry lips.

Can I really do this? Do I have a choice?
 

He spoke to her in Chinese but all she could do was nod. She did not protest as he led her into a back room. He pointed to a silk upholstered divan and Esmeralda sat down heavily. Her donor sat down beside her and unbuttoned the collar of his tunic.  Her nostrils flared at the scent of his mortal blood and without a will of her own she fastened her teeth to his neck and drank deeply. Once she was satisfied her donor left and she lay back down on the divan. Everything stood out in sharper perspective, the blood red lamplight, the sandalwood incense and her own eternal damnation. 

Tears filled her eyes, spilling over the corners, and turned her hair damp with the moisture. She squeezed her eyes shut and behind her darkened lids the image of Devlin appeared. He started to speak to her but she gasped and shook herself awake.

“Curse you, Devlin!”

She sat up reeling a little from the powerful surge of energy. She dug some gold pieces out of her purse and laid them on the divan and then left silently. Once outside she hurried back the way she had come. Back to the train depot where she would board the next train for parts unknown.

As Esmeralda had made her exodus from Nevada she had gradually adjusted to vampirism. She only preyed on the fringe element of any town she visited. She also developed a keen sense and ability to recognize other vampires. Never before had she realized how very prevalent they were in the West. Many of them were gamblers like herself and Devlin.

Devlin, the stone in her shoe, the hole in her heart! She rambled from town to town and kept on the move. Her travels took her from one obscure grease-spot of a town to the next. She stopped long enough to get into a card game win a stake and move on. 

For the next few years, this became the pattern of her existence. Even though she had seen the demon killed and Devlin placed in the ground, at times she could not shake the feeling that she was being followed or even hunted. At night she dreaded sleep and fought to stay awake and when finally she did slip into unconsciousness bittersweet images of Devlin possessed her. She could see him in the darkness of his crypt and sometimes in the predawn she could swear that he sat on the edge of her bed. 

When her train rolled into Arizona Territory and the town of Tombstone something inside of her clicked into place like the gears of a timepiece. A sense of precognition, or premonition created a tingle between her eyes. If she’d been able to speak to Annie she would have asked her to explain it, but Annie had been silent these many months following Devlin’s death. She felt more alone than before.

She knew Jamie had followed Dahlia to New Orleans to start a life there. And as for Ligea and the Hive, they had disappeared; she didn’t care for their company anyway.

She had hoped to find a place where she might find purpose again. Tombstone felt like the eye of the storm. One in which she might, despite the unfortunate state of her immortal body, settle down for a while and even set up shop. After all, if she was to live forever, she might as well do something useful. A town this raw, reeked of wickedness, the kind that Esmeralda was equipped to deal with as long as it did not involve her fragile heart.

When she stepped off the train in Tombstone the bright sunlight, a fierce ball of fire in the dusty desert sky blinded her. She was forced to hastily put on a pair of scarlet sunglasses lest she be blinded.

Through the lenses she could see rough wooden storefronts and saloons. A busy boardwalk packed with people from all walks of life, from miners to prostitutes, Indians to prosperous businessmen. Gunshots peppered the air along with the sound of tinny saloon pianos.

Tombstone, another mining boomtown, had sprung up overnight so fast half of its citizens were forced to camp in tents or on the bare ground.

She was not the only refugee to flee Virginia City for Tombstone. There was one other. He had watched her arrive. He had come to town one week earlier, a ragged scarecrow of a man, leading a donkey. A donkey packing jars of curious pickled meat. He was the proprietor of a newly pitched tent that crouched on the edge of Chinatown, Wing’s Noodle House and Opium Den.

Chapter Thirty

Dust to Dust

O
n October 31
st
1881 a shabby, whiskey soaked grave robber, flopped down on the ground under a pomegranate tree.  He looked up at the yellow moon. It was perfect lighting for what he had in mind.

Over the last two months he had been systematically digging and smashing his way into caskets for any trinkets he could find. The cemetery was his personal Motherload filled with gold rings and teeth, jewels and the occasional gold or silver coin. He’d had his eye on a certain unmarked crypt for a long time. Ever since he had discovered the huge seal was pure silver. He had come fully equipped with an iron chisel and hammer and he intended to pry it loose for good this time. The amount of silver in that large cross shaped seal could put him in whores and whisky for months. He licked lips in anticipation then took a long swig from his bottle. He got to his feet and set his chisel between the stone and cross and began hammering and prying the seal loose.

From the corner of his eye he saw a white wispy shape dart by. He squinted at it and scratched his head.

“Who’s there?” he called. 

The white shape moved closer. Before his eyes a handsome blond woman appeared. She had tightly curled platinum colored hair and large luminous diamond blue eyes. Her pure white dress was neat and prim with a high lace collar. The faint scent of honeysuckle floated in the air around her. She smiled at him. He sweated. He felt dirty in the presence of such pristine beauty. She came closer.

Mesmerized, he let his whiskey bottle slip out of his hand where it smashed in the dirt. She smiled. Moonlight glinted on the sharp incisors that punched through her gums. Now terrified he tried to run but she rushed at him. Reflex, and a lifetime of beatings, made him slash up and out with his chisel. It ripped through the sleeve of her prim white dress. She screamed as her blood sprayed through the air and with the strength of ten men she leapt at him and pinned him to the ground. Her teeth sank into his neck.

She drained every drop his life’s blood from his body.

When Cleo had drunk her fill she stood up and rolled up one of her sleeves. For the past five years she had watched over Devlin’s crypt waiting for just the right moment. She waited for the correct phase of the moon and certain planetary aspects to conjoin. She took a knife out of her garter and sliced her wrist. Her blood dripped down pooling in the dry dirt, joining the blood of the grave robber. Her work here was done and she could finally feel a sense of closure with dear Thaddeus’ death. Devlin, Ligea’s dark and fascinating Lord, would now have a chance of resurrection. She would be able to leave the serenity of the Virginia City cemetery and reunite with the Hive in the next town that they had settled in. She dragged the empty shell of the grave robber’s body to the edge of the cemetery. All that was left of her victim and her presence was a small pool of blood at the base of the pomegranate tree. 

The blood sank into the roots.

It went deep, deep, deep into the earth and down into the secret crypt itself.

Inside the crypt Devlin stirred and hungered. He had lain in a state of suspended animation with no concept of time and place. His only companions were lurid dreams and flashes of the past and future. He knew that he had gradually become weaker and weaker and had slipped further and further away from any sort of being. Lately, more often than not he felt enveloped in a total blackness, nothingness. When a fat drop of blood seeped through a crack in the wood of his coffin and fell on his lips he licked it instinctively. More droplets rained on his face and he consumed them eagerly. A spark of strength coursed through him and he pushed the lid off and crawled out of the silken bed.  

The face of his Angel shone before him in the dark of the crypt and a searing pain tore through every inch of his body. In a flash the whole incident beneath the Gilded Bird came back to him. He was alive again and she was once again an elusive dream. He flung the door to the crypt open. The pale dawn of All Souls Day stung his eyes. His appearance was unscathed the only change in his unearthly handsomeness being the pure white streak at the right temple of his coal black hair.

He whistled. From a distance the great thunderous sound of hoof beats broke over the cemetery. The black stallion Mephistopheles came galloping over the hill and skidded to a halt before him. He snorted and reared up on his hind legs, red fire shone in his large dark eyes. He nickered a greeting. Devlin stroked his nose.

“Hello old friend.”

The stallion nudged him affectionately. Devlin swung up unto his broad bare back and they rode out of the cemetery and into the town of Virginia City. He had no concept of how long he had lain in his crypt, as space and time had been one big blur. A suspended animation in which he could feel Esmeralda’s life-force reach out for him. He had dreamed of her. Dreams, that were so real that at times they had been like looking into the future where he could see her every move and even smell the scent of her skin.

As he galloped his stallion up to D Street he could see changes all around him. The tall narrow house that had once been the House of the Rising Moon was vacant and dilapidated with the windows and doors boarded up. When he rode back up to B Street he found that the Emerald Salon was now a private residence and had been painted a sedate grey and blue. His railcar however still remained where it was parked at the depot but it was covered with dust and closed up tighter than a drum. He found his hidden key and let himself in staying only long enough to gather what he needed to travel light. It was apparent that his Angel may have a few years head start over him but he aimed to close the gap. Once he was provisioned, he saddled the stallion and strapped on his loaded six guns, he mounted Mephistopheles and gave him his head.

It had not taken Esmeralda long to establish herself in Tombstone. Her beauty and charm along with her skill at the Monte table had quickly begun to build her a stake. In a few short weeks she was able to purchase her own saloon on the main boardwalk. Many men sought to gain her attention, a few of them quite notorious characters, but she was not interested. At night, after she was done at the tables, she would sometimes visit the tents of Chinatown. There she could buy healing herbs and find willing donors to slake her thirst. Her life settled into semblance of a routine as she opened and closed the saloon, ordered supplies and took private clients into her backroom.

She found Tombstone ripe with bizarre, evil doings, possessions, curses and the usual lot. She seldom read her tarot. Not because she had lost her faith in it but because she was afraid to know what her own future held.

Her natural abilities were ten times stronger as a vampire and she found herself able to hear the very thoughts of the people around her. It also gave her an advantage at the gaming tables. So much so that she began the gain quite a reputation. A mysterious woman with a mysterious past, in such a wild and wooly town, attracted all sorts of attention. Many men pursued her, mortal and immortal, only to be disappointed at her rejection. She felt as if she was a widow in mourning who could still feel the presence of her deceased love. She felt Devlin all around her. It was as if she expected to see him materialize at any moment. What she was waiting for she could not put a name to, she only knew that she did. She frantically filled her waking moments with the business of the saloon.

When she finally rested she had moments of fear and premonition. At times from the corner of her eyes she saw something flit like a leathery winged bat. Or a raggedy form of a man? Was it real? Or just another specter?

She was prepared for anything.

When she went out into the night, to the tents of Chinatown, she packed a loaded gun. Not her favorite pepperbox anymore but a Colt 44, a necessary upgrade in a town such as this. 

Once he was fully equipped and provisioned, Devlin and Mephistopheles galloped out of the Nevada Territory by way of Dayton and the Mormon Crossing. It did not take long for him to pick up the trail of his Angel, no matter how cold it had become he could track her movements. She was a woman that was hard to forget. Wherever she had stayed for any amount of time she was remembered. Almost too much and that worried him. He noticed that Esmeralda kept moving almost as if she was being followed.

Desperate to find her, he had not taken the time to find out if any of Peabody’s or Big Jim’s crew had survived. His memory of that final battle was like an elusive mist with bits and pieces of it floating to the top through his dreams. All that he had cared about had fallen away from him. He recalled more and more each night. He was determined to find her again. She was out there alive and it was time for her to accept her role beside him. 

Devlin rode on and on until he caught a break in Yuma. He had just arrived in the town, watered his horse and was heading down the boardwalk to find a poker game when he saw a familiar face.  It was a woman dressed in a high collared black bombazine dress, her blond curls covered by a drab bonnet. Eyes like blue diamonds flashed under the brim as she looked from side to side. It was the Librarian, Cleo. She carried some books under her arm and was followed by a small group of school children. He followed her discretely to a one room schoolhouse at the edge of town. He waited until her class was out, and the children had run off to their homes, before he approached her.

She looked up when he entered the small classroom. She had been tidying the wooden desks and stacks of paper. The look on her face was serene, emotionless.

“Cleo, you know why I have come?”

Cleo smiled. “It was my hope that you lived, that and careful planning.”

Devlin tipped his hat. “It was you that stood guard over my crypt and for that I thank you, but I would also press you for some answers to my questions.”

Cleo stood up straight. She clasped her hands before her. “Thaddeus was my soul mate, the twin shadow of my heart. You avenged his death from that monster and for that I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

Devlin nodded then reached forward and took one of her clasped hands in hands. “Tell me what happened to Esmeralda at the time of my death, and most of all, where she has gone.”

Cleo was silent for a moment. “It is not for me to tell you what transpired that day. I know that she left Virginia City the day we put you in your crypt.”

“Do you or any of the others know where she is now?”

“Ligea and The Hive have scattered. I don’t know if they will be happy to know that you live. As for Miss Jones, well, I may have some information.”

“Tell me,” Devlin demanded.

Cleo pulled away then straightened a stack of papers. “I’ve heard tell from a gambler who passed through here last spring that a red-haired Monte dealer had set up shop down south near the Mexican border in a town called Tombstone.”

That night Devlin rode like the night wind out of Yuma. His Angel would not elude him any longer, he resolved. Instead once he found her, he would make her his queen, and they would live this life eternal together. Gallu was not the last of the Babylonian demons and the only way he could protect her was to keep her close.

The wretched Chinaman, Wing, watched her from the shadows. He watched as Esmeralda crept into Chinatown and watched as she went about her business on the boardwalk. He knew she was now one of the Jaing Shi. He could smell it on her. At night when he delivered firewood to the saloons he lingered at the back door of the Emerald Saloon. In his role of a silent, subservient Chinese peddler no one took notice of him. He was consumed with an anxiety and a hunger that he doused with opium and chunks of pickled, gristly meat. The moon was waxing and his visions had shown him that a dark rider was coming. He knew that he, Wing, must be ready.  He had never possessed a firearm but he found himself stealing a sawed off shotgun out of the flaccid arms of one of his customers as they lay in an opium stupor on one of the pallets in his tent. The heart in his bony chest beat like a rabbit’s. The time for him to strike was near. The buzzing of his brain where that hollow voice, the one that commanded him, would finally be silenced.

That fateful day of the Red Dragon was the day that he, Wing, became the demon’s slave. After Buffalo Hide had stabbed him with the big knife he had crawled back to Chinatown and his tent. He had poured Grandmother’s styptic into the gaping wound but it had failed to stop the blood. He lay wretched and dying on his pallet full of blistering resentment. Resentment of a lifetime of being ignored, kicked like a dog, and fed garbage seethed inside of him. His hands shook violently as he lit his opium pipe and sucked on it like it was teat of a twelve year old prostitute.

He wasn’t really sure whether he died, or if it was a dream, but he found himself wandering into the hills until he came to the dark mouth of a mine. He felt as if he had perfect night vision and walked with ease through the tunnel until he reached a golden cavern. The air was thick with the smell of smoke and roasted flesh. He looked around.

A red scaly fish like thing flopped in the dirt. 

Fish! Wing was always alert to new ingredients for his noodles and he was not very discriminating. Curious, he had not seen a red fish like this since leaving his native China. He bent down and grabbed it. It writhed in his hands snakelike, something weird without a head really, just a segment of some type of serpent.